Design Journal #8 - Never too late!

Hi Journal,
I am sorry, I seem to have forgotten about you! Maybe it was all of the work on the EDIT 6170 & 6190 Project and then through in Thanksgiving, and some things get pushed aside! But, better late than never!

Today I have been diligently working on my project. I am doing some final touches and adding some of recommendations from the showcase rehearsal. All in all, I heard some great feedback, like adding a PREVIOUS button to my scrapbook pages and changing some misspelled words. Also, someone pointed out to me that it would be nice to have some mouse over effects when they were maneuvering through the index page. I plan to add the final touches to that and upload the project by Wednesday. As far as the design, I am really proud of my project. I heard a lot of great comments from other classmates complementing the colors, attractiveness, and simplicity of the site. I am happy that I finally went back to the original idea, followed my instincts and created a project that I love, and I hope my daughter will love too!

For my literature review I read "Project Kid-Designer" by Rieber, Luke and Smith. I find this article interesting because I hope to use it's insight on helping my 14 year old study for his school tests. The article goes on to state that "while many children have difficulty in school due to physical or learning disabilities that are beyond their control, others do poorly because they do not take school work seriously." The article also declares "Children lack of motivation to "achieve" stems from them not seeing school tasks as authentic and meaningful." I feel as if that is the case with Andre. To combat this motivation, the participants of the article decided to use "play" as a learning tool for middle school students, and have students design their own games. "This is similar to the not so surprising phenomenon that if you want to learning something, well teach it." I found some the outcomes interesting in this article - group dynamics of students who before might have been outsiders, but by the end were included in the group and whose opinions were valued. Another interesting outcome was the view that the students had on the adults as initially teachers, and then as part of their group. The most interesting idea is that two of these groups were "low achievers, or at-risk" students who were able to come up and design "cool" educational games. I am wanting to try to use this idea on Andre, and maybe we can create a game that can help him study for his tests. My idea is a board game, who's cards can change with his particular subject. He can provide the subject information and questions and my husband and I can also play... maybe we should call it --- "stump mom and dad?"

Next steps:
Do final touches on my project
Upload to Moodle
Call it a day!

References:
Rieber, L. P., Luke, N., & Smith, J. (1998). Project KID DESIGNER: Constructivism at work through play. Meridian: Middle School Computer Technology [On-line], 1(1). Available http://www.ncsu.edu/meridian/index.html